“Happy Hospitals Make Happy Patients”…

… Or says a study recently published in Science Daily. The research, conducted by University of Michigan Professor John Griffith, concludes:

In a newly published report, Griffith examined the attributes of 34 community hospitals in nine states that have earned the Health Care Sector Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, a nationally recognized quality benchmark for various industries.

Griffith’s findings suggest that the single-biggest factor in patient satisfaction is hospital employee morale, which starts with outside-the-box thinking at the very top management levels.

These community hospitals had the happiest patients and caregivers, but only because these hospitals departed radically from traditional hospital management, Griffith says.

My co-author Leigh Branham and I conducted a study of the employee engagement in over 100 hospitals, and came to the same conclusion– there is a direct link between employee engagement  and patient satisfaction. Moreover, employee at hospitals with very low engagement results were far more likely to report patient safety and other complaince-related problems, something no hospital wants. Perhaps one way to deal with our health care crisis is to create more engaged workplaces like these honored today.

Tags: Employee Engagement, Employee Satisfaction, Employee Survey, Hospital Administration, Hospitals, Patient Loyalty, Patient Satisfaction